When I hear those around me try to justify or equivocate taking a knife to the clitoris of an infant, an alien sort of anger begins to claw at my temples.
It’s the subtle rage that starts in the base of the spine, slowly and imperceptibly rising upward until it grapples your brain like a frenzied monkey clawing at a hard fruit.
(You should know, I can feel a great pounding in my head as I write this.)
To begin at the beginning: there’s an idea, popular in the intellectual left, that the practices of other cultures and religions are immune from criticism from the Western world.
This is known as cultural relativism.
In an attempt to think of themselves as “open-minded” these people genuinely believe that even the most barbaric (and I use the term advisedly) practices of other cultures are outside of our place to judge. The image of an ignorant 18th century white man raving about the “savages” still sits on their chests like an old ghost, and cultural relativism is the reaction.
This is understandable. Ever since the refutation of colonialism, uncountable and unjustifiable crimes of the Western hemisphere have come to light. I feel that these are understood. The unspeakable injustice and indignity of slavery, of imperialism and its racism have been well-documented elsewhere.
Nevertheless, there are some indignities so evil, so against the notion of individual freedom that one’s empathy overrides any nervous jittering about whether one is fit to talk about it.
At some point, one simply has to be a human being to speak out.
So it is with female genital mutilation (FGM), a phenomenon, classified by the World Health Organization, which consists of “partial or total removal of the clitoris and labia minora,” or, perhaps even more putrid: “the narrowing of the vaginal opening through the creation of a covering seal.” The girls involved are usually between the ages of infancy and 15.
Over 100 million girls and women have been “cut” in this way, and it is no use in hiding the fact that these practices are socio-religious in nature. This practice has no medical benefits.
As I write this now, I am trying my level best to keep the tone civil. Even though I can feel that rage clawing at my brain, this is a debate, after all.
There are at least two sides, just as any debate should have. Here they are, as I see them:
The first (cultural relativist) position believes that an adult consenting to some cosmetic vaginal surgery in the U.S., under proper medical care, is comparable to drugging an nine-year-old girl in her sleep, tying her down so she is fully immobile and taking a rusty knife to slice off the various parts of her vagina.
Afterwards, the one holding the knife, sometimes a beloved family member, takes care to sew closed the bleeding remains of her viscera with bits of thread.
Ah, but don’t get the wrong idea. Fair is fair, right? Give the mutilator credit: they make sure to leave a small opening in the stitching to allow for the passing of menstrual blood and urine.
If she survives, a big “if,” her groom will have the honor to rend those threads on their honeymoon. This is done to ensure her “purity.”
The second position on this subject is my own. (Can you, perhaps, guess what it might be?)
Until very recently, I had never heard of people who believe that this climax of human evil exists in the same universe as California breast implant surgeons or their clients.
The idea proposed is: FGM is bad, sure, but sometimes women in the U.S. have surgery to make themselves feel more attractive to men. Isn’t that the same basic idea?
I didn’t think I needed to write about it. Surely even the proponents of “equality in argument” in which everything horrible done in other countries can be countered with a pseudo-intellectual “Well, in the U.S. … ” would be able to recognize FGM for what it is.
Evidently, I was wrong.
I wrote an article about circumcision last year, questioning the acceptance of an ancient Jewish ritual to take the knife to the penis of a small child. Even in that case, some medical professionals defend the practice.
There is some room for real debate, despite my unchanging view that it is an irreversible encroaching on the rights of the child.
Not so with FGM. Read the writing of people who have actually gone through that horror and survived, (Ayaan Hirsi Ali stands out foremost). What right-thinking person could dare to refute her words as “Western propaganda?”
And yet, I hear people, serious, college-educated people, saying that they believe the main problem of the whole horror isn’t the unspeakable cruelty and pointlessness of FGM, but the unsterile conditions in which it is practiced. Perhaps they think providing a freshly sharpened scalpel is the solution?
The point: there are some things that exceed the human capacity for thought. Beyond that edge, words simply lose their meaning. Error. 404. File not found.
FGM, the experience of it, the sheer terror of having your kin descend on you to ensure your “purity” and end your sexual life forever, is such a thought.
And every thinking person would do well to acknowledge that.